Overture to Don Pasquale
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)

Approximate duration of 6 minutes

Donizetti was a direct musical heir to Rossini, and a composer of nearly equal importance to 19th-century opera. Along with his contemporary Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), Donizetti was the key link between Rossini and Verdi. Like Rossini, both Donizetti and Bellini found themselves in Paris in the 1830s, where there was a thriving market for Italian opera. Donizetti arrived in Paris in 1838, remaining there for eight years until declining health caused him to return to his native Bergamo.

Don Pasquale was premiered at Paris’ Théâtre-Italien on 3 January 1843. The principal roles were sung by Giulia Grisi, Mario Tamburini, Antonio Tamburini, and Luigi Lablache, four of the most celebrated singers of their day. Donizetti was at the pinnacle of his career. The commission had arrived in autumn 1842, and he set Giovanni Ruffini’s libretto in only eleven days that November. The opera was a critical and popular success and has retained its popularity. Along with L’elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale is not only top-drawer Donizetti, but also one of the crowning glories of 19th-century opera buffa.

The overture is both brilliant and tuneful, with reliance on two principal melodies in the opera. After the opening flourish, solo cello and bassoon declaim the hero Ernesto’s serenade “Com’è gentil;” that portion of the overture serves as a slow introduction. The heroine Norina’s flirtatious and seductive aria “So anch’io la virtù magica” is the second principal theme, now in a different key and slightly faster tempo. From there Donizetti dances forward with variations on Norina’s tune, a couple of stormy interludes, and a series of episodes that gather momentum worthy of a Rossini crescendo. With great panache, it foretells the zany comedy that will follow.

The score calls for piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, and strings.

Noches en los jardines de España [Nights in the Gardens of Spain]
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Approximate duration 23 minutes

Neither a piano concerto nor a tone poem, Nights in the Gardens of Spain is unique in the orchestral literature.  Manuel de Falla's three nocturnes for piano and orchestra are all about color, a subtle, ever-changing voyage through the orchestra.  While solo piano is featured, Nights is no virtuoso showpiece.  Rather, the pianist is often in the foreground; its role may be likened to that of the violin in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.  But the keyboard is always an integral part of the larger orchestral fabric.  Which instrument or instruments are playing is always as important as the notes themselves. This work would fail in an orchestral reduction for two pianos.

For sheer, sensuous beauty of the music, Falla's Nights is unparalleled in his music, and possibly even in the entire piano literature.  It takes as its point of departure the beautiful gardens of the hill that overlook the Alhambra in Granada.  But Falla's symphonic impressions, as he subtitled them, are not illustrations of specific scenes or places.  His music is evocative rather than descriptive.  The composer told musicologist J.B. Trend in the 1920s:

If these `symphonic impressions' have achieved their object, the mere enumeration of their titles should be a sufficient guide to the hearer....The end for which it was written is no other than to evoke [the memory of] places, sensations, and sentiments....The music has no pretensions to being descriptive:  it is merely expressive.  But something more than the sounds of festivals and dances has inspired these `evocations in sound,' for melancholy and mystery have their part also.

Nights in the Gardens of Spain was composed between 1911 and 1915; several years of revisions preceded its publication in 1922.  Some scholarly controversy surrounds the origins of Falla's music.  The two principal theories regarding his inspiration are the paintings of his friend and countryman Santiago Rusiñol y Prats and the poetry of the French symbolists.  We know that he began work on it during his Parisian sojourn (1907-1914), and that his original thought was to write a solo piano work.  Eventually he expanded the concept to piano and orchestra, and the completed work was submitted in fulfillment of a commission from the Spanish conductor Enrique Fernández Arbós, who led the premiere performance in 1916 with José Cubiles at the piano.

Essentially Nights is an extended set of variations, and all three movements grow out of the same germinal motive presented by the violas in the opening measures.  While the music is unmistakably Spanish -- so mandated Falla's entire philosophy -- there is a palpable French influence:  the Debussy of Ibéria and La soirée dans Grenade and the Ravel of Rapsodie espagnole clearly had their imprint on their Spanish protegé and friend.  Throughout all three movements the undulating repetition of patterns is like the endless variety of the sea, punctuated by muted bursts of light from the piano: now in waterfalls of sound, now imitating the tuning of guitars.  Falla's music is carried along on beams of moonlight, wafting through the balmy air by languorous breezes.

While all three movements have an overriding consistency of character, the second, "A Distant Dance," has a more pronounced rhythmic profile; and the finale, "In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba," is a wild, fantastic movement, almost verging on the orgiastic.  Throughout the three segments, an oriental feeling reflects the Moorish influence so prevalent in southern Spanish culture, and above all the glorious mystery of the Alhambra.

De Falla's orchestra in Nights in the Gardens. . . is the largest he ever used.  The score calls for 2 flutes plus piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, triangle, harp, celesta, solo piano and strings.

Symphony No. 3 in C major, Opus 52
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

The orchestral music of Jean Sibelius divides into two distinct groups: programmatic tone poems drawing on Finnish legend, and the seven symphonies. Although some of his contemporaries attempted to foist a programmatic subtext on the symphonies, Sibelius resolutely opposed any extramusical association in these abstract works. In fact, the Third Symphony is not even specifically nationalist, as the First and Second Symphonies had been. Sibelius was clearly shifting gears with this work. He abandoned the large gestures of the earlier symphonies and wrote for a noticeably smaller orchestra.

This symphony represented a change from the Nordic, quasi-Russian spirit of his first two efforts in the genre. The shift coincided with a decision in spring 1904 to abandon urban Helsinki in favor of the peace and beauty of the countryside. Sibelius purchased property in Järvenpää, about twenty miles outside the capital. Architect Lars Sonck designed the new house, Ainola, which was ready for occupancy in September 1904. The secluded new house inspired Sibelius to compose. Within weeks, he wrote to a friend that he had begun his Third Symphony. It occupied him on and off for the next three years.

A trip to England in November 1905 provided significant impetus for the piece. The English conductor and composer Granville Bantock was a champion of Sibelius's music. Through Bantock, Sibelius met other important advocates in England. He left England with a commitment to conduct the premiere of his new symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Society in March 1907. Because he did not finish the finale in time, that engagement had to be postponed. The Third Symphony, which Sibelius dedicated to Bantock, was first performed in Helsinki on 26 September 1907. The composer conducted.

This symphony lacks the orchestral opulence of its predecessors; but it is greatly admired by musicians. The composer often referred to it as "the most beloved and least fortunate of my children."

Clearly Sibelius was moving away from the post-romantic legacy in this work. Its compression -- four movements telescope to three, which total barely thirty minutes in performance — indicates a reaction against extravagant length. Recognizable Sibelius signatures are present, such as extended pedal points in the horns and motivic fragments in thirds delivered by woodwind duets. An emphasis on the strings for the melodic argument, right from the bluff opening theme in the celli, is something new in his symphonic modus operandi.

The first movement has been compared to Mozart and Haydn in its textural transparency and clarity of form.  Subtle connections between themes lend it to the organic inner unity that is so characteristic of Sibelius's style. There is a decisive sense of C major, subtly flavored with modal colorings. And the development has a busy-ness in the strings that approaches perpetual motion.

The slow movement has a folk-like theme that the orchestra varies. A brisker middle section has elements of scherzo, blurring the definition of a ‘slow’ movement. 

The finale is the work's most interesting and original movement. Its binary structure fuses scherzo and finale even more decisively. Its extended ostinati and insistent rhythmic patterns are another favorite device that marks this music with the Sibelius stamp.

Sibelius scored his Third Symphony for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.